Barcelona contingent has no trouble explaining itself

Photograph by: Pedro Torres

MONTREAL - Art souterrain covers seven kilometres through the labyrinth that is Montreal’s underground city, but at Complexe Desjardins it surfaces into the sunlight, to where nine artists from the invited city of Barcelona have set up booths around the central fountain to show their videos.

While the artists left Montreal on Tuesday — “we have jobs,” one of them said — there are volunteer mediators at Complexe Desjardins and throughout the circuit who can help visitors understand the artists’ intentions. There are a lot of mediators — installations by 120 artists are set up throughout the network of métro stations, passageways and 14 buildings.

Art souterrain began last Saturday and runs until March 17, between McGill and Place des Arts métro stations and along a horseshoe-shaped route that passes the Place d’Armes, Square Victoria and Bonaventure stations.

The event, with its many mediators, fits founder and director Frédéric Loury’s goal of expanding public knowledge of contemporary art.

Sophie Guignard is a mediator. She explained how Kaia Hugin, a Norwegian in the Barcelona contingent, used archival photos and her own narration to create a fake documentary. In Hannava, she traces her love of nature to a Sami (aboriginal) grandmother she doesn’t have. Hugin’s comic struggle in the video to erect a tent is a clue that something is amiss.

“You can use old photos to say whatever you want,” Guignard observed. She also noted that Hugin poses the question: “Is it necessary to have a Sami ancestor to get closer to nature?”

Pieter Geenen and others were at the Barcelona exhibit on Monday to talk about their work. Geenen’s video Relocation shows Mount Ararat emerging from night’s darkness into the morning sun. Mount Ararat is a symbol of Armenia, but Armenians can only see it from afar because the mountain is across the border in Turkey, and the nations remain divided over responsibility for the Armenian genocide of 1915.

Geenen has reversed the image of Mount Ararat to evoke the side of the mountain that Armenians can’t see, and inserts subtitles whose text is based on comments made by Turks and Armenians. But the nationalities of the people quoted aren’t identified, and comments like “they were good people” are ambiguous as to who is speaking of whom.

“I’m not a journalist or a documentary filmmaker,” Geenen said. “I don’t take sides.”

Ryan Rivadeneyra’s Livin’ la Vida Loca is a series of short stories about destruction and creation. The Luddites, who fought industrialization in the 1800s by breaking machinery, are included. So is the Unabomber, the murderous neo-Luddite, and last year’s Hurricane Sandy, which caused extensive damage in New York and New Jersey.

People in the art community think New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood suffered the most because of the art that was destroyed, Rivadeneyra said. “But what is art destruction compared to the suffering of people?”

Marla Jacarilla made Cartographies by pointing her camera at a terrace while she walks around it. An accompanying narration about world geography is distracting, but causes the cracks and scuff marks in the walkway to take on greater significance.

The piece is about imagination, Jacarilla said. “What people can see even when there is nothing.”

Pedro Torres made his video Bifurcation in the halls of a building that houses artists’ studios.

“The corridors were always empty,” he said, “but I knew there were people behind the doors because I could see them in the windows outside.”

The video moves through endless corridors, bathed in yellow light to make the space fictional, while voices read excerpts from Jorge Luis Borges’s The Garden of Forking Paths. The feeling is claustrophobic and frantic.

The Barcelona exhibit is just one small section of the Art souterrain labyrinth. Also, there are special activities on many days, including performances, guided tours and workshops.

Art souterrain continues until March 17. For more information, visit artsouterrain.com.

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Raphaëlle de Groot, winner of last year’s Sobey Art Award for a Canadian artist under 40, will represent Quebec at this year’s Venice Biennale, which opens June 1.

The Montreal artist will begin a performance in the Giardini, the park where Canada and other countries have national pavilions, and will continue along the city’s canals in a gondola.

De Groot said in an interview that her performance will involve the kind of transformations she has been doing since 2006, in which she covers her head and body and becomes a living sculpture. Blinded, she becomes vulnerable.

Risk is involved, but risk is inherent in creation, she said. “Any work to move forward needs to confront the unknown.”

In one performance, de Groot stood on an unstable bucket. “There was no danger, but people were tense, thinking I might fall,” she said.

The Venice performance will last two to three hours. She will practise getting into a gondola blindfolded, but there won’t be a rehearsal.

“I don’t know yet how much can be planned,” she said. “How will I get to the gondola? Will people help me?”

Louise Déry, director of Galerie de l’UQÀM and curator for the venture, has long envisioned de Groot performing in Venice, the city of masks, masquerade and disguise.

Déry writes: “I could see her balanced precariously on a gondola, head and body transformed, blinded, masked and encumbered with prostheses and sundry found objects, roaming the canals, a striking effigy leaving in her wake a revisited idea of the figure of the artist.”

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